Cody Clark gets his first hit Matty D opens it up with a grand slam and the bullpen doesn't slam the door but does get it shut.
The Astros continued their quest to avoid 100 losses on Friday night by winning their fourth in a row and again beating up on the high-powered Anaheim Angels.
Dallas Keuchel's second rough outing in a row was basically the only hard part of this game to watch. The lefty has not been able to find his consistency this season throwing great in back-to-back outings at the end of August but has been knocked around in September. After the six runs Keuchel allowed in his 5.2 innings of work tonight he has allowed 11 runs in nine September innings.
The bright side was his nine strikeouts but Keuchel allowed ten hits for his second consecutive outing. The lefty started the sixth inning due to the fact he had a 9-4 lead to work with but after allowing back-to-back RBI hits to Andrew Romine and Erick Aybar he was pulled in favor of Jorge De Leon.
Luckily for the Astros they did have those nine runs. In the third inning the scorchingly hot Jose Altuve lined a three-run home run into the Crawford Boxes to give Houston a 3-2 lead.
Anaheim responded with a lead off home run in the fourth by Chris Ianetta and a Romine RBI single to regain a one-run advantage. And then the Astros unloaded.
I have to believe that the way the fifth started had an extra emotional lift to the Astros' ballclub as catcher Cody Clark finally recorded his first hit as an MLB player. It was Clark's 26th at-bat that proved to be the lucky one as he blooped a single into center field garnering this reaction from the Houston bench.